Against All Odds
by AthenaMinerva
Summary: Nymphadora Tonks - loud, funny and clumsy. Remus Lupin - quiet, calm and serious. Find out how falling over can result in falling in love.


I was rather unsure about what I was doing here. I mean, I didn't even really know what the Order was about. I hadn't even heard about it until last week, when Kingsley came and cornered me in my office, sorry I mean cubicle, and started banging on about it.

Well, he didn't really bang on about it given what it was based on. If you exaggerate things they tend to sound a lot more interesting than they really are. Don't get me wrong, the Order did interesting, but all Kingsley said we would be doing now was basic surveillance work. Nothing which would really use my Auror skills.

That was what I was, an Auror. Who would ever have thought that clumsy and loud, Nymphadora Tonks, would make it as one? When I first told my mum and dad that I had been accepted onto the training programme they thought it was some kind of joke given my lack of stealth skills.

Even Charlie Weasley, who was supposed to be one of my best mates, laughed when I told him that I had been accepted onto it. You should have seen it when I told him I had passed the final exam with flying colours, he looked as if he was going to faint.

Given that my weak attempts at pranking at Hogwarts usually resulted in me getting detentions for the whole week and a telling off from Professor Sprout, I could kind of see why he would react like that. This was with me usually performing the pranks while even using my Metamorphmagus skills. I would be worried too if the person who was meant to be fighting dark wizards couldn't even get away with trying to enchant all of the Christmas trees to throw pine needles at passers-by.

As well as having appalling balance I also had a terrible sense of direction. I wasn't even sure if I was going the right way now. I would have used a locator spell, but given how crowded Muggle London was with all the kids on school holidays, I would be breaking the Statute of Secrecy by doing so. Getting called to report to the Ministry for that would be pretty embarrassing to say the least.

Kingsley would have a field day if that happened. He was supposed to be my boss, but he was more like an older brother in reality, spending most of his time teasing me and annoying me. He was such a lovely person, Kingsley.

I pulled the crumbled piece of parchment out of my pocket and looked at the address which was written on it. Number twelve Grimmauld Place, London. My mum knew that place well, considering her aunt and uncle used to live there before they kicked the bucket. Of course she didn't really want to talk about them. She never really did talk about her family much. I didn't blame her really, as they all sounded like a bunch of nutters.

Sirius Black lived there now. I still have to stop myself running around screaming at the mention of his name. I did try and at least limit the amount of times I looked like an idiot. He was my cousin of some sort. I didn't really know; all those second cousins and first cousins three times removed, was too confusing for me and frankly I didn't care too much about it. I was just pleased I could get to know a new family member.

My grandparents on my dad's side, died ages ago and he didn't have any siblings. Then of course Mum didn't speak to any of her family, due to them all hating her and thinking that she was a blood traitor and all that jazz.

I carried on walking along the stereotypical London street in the hope I was going the right way. Gum covered the pavement so you could barely see the original colour. There was a Muggle mum pushing her child along in a pram with a cigarette dangling in her hand. Some wannabe Muggle gangstas strolled around with their hoods up, despite the fact that it was a warm day in June. England was such a charming place.

This part of the world seemed so normal; it was hard to think that an anti-Voldemort group hanged out here. Well, it was hard to think that Voldemort was even back and I was attending the first meeting of the newly reformed Order.

I entered a sunlit square which was considerably nicer than the part I had just walked through. Sure there were still vandalized benches lined around a patch of dried out grass, but there was no litter on the streets and the pavement was more gum free than the previous one I was walking along. There was a sign on the edge of the square which had 'Grimmauld Place' emblazed upon it.

Wow, Tonks, you managed to get a new place in one piece, and on time too. My life was definitely on the up, as this was one of the most incident free journeys I had had in a long time.

It was easy to see where number twelve Grimmauld Place was. First of all, it had just miraculously appeared out of nowhere and I doubted any other wizards or witches lived around here. Secondly, I could see a man wearing a black cloak walking up the stairs to it.

I knew I would have a high risk of falling over by doing so, but as I generally didn't heed to caution, I began to run towards the man entering the townhouse. Seeing the actual meeting place brought on a great sense of excitement inside of me. Just the thought that we may be able to bring down Voldemort in there made me want to get in there even sooner and start plotting.

I had a serious love for plotting and planning pranks. I sometimes wondered why I wasn't a Slytherin like my mum. It was probably because my plotting skills were so bad and that the pranks usually fell through. I was so bad at it Slytherin didn't want me, so I ended up in Hufflepuff like my dad.

The door to the house had opened to let the man in. I was so close to it now I could see the interior of the entrance hall, and to my surprise I could see something like a troll's leg standing in it.

I was too busy paying attention to the troll's leg, my brain had failed to connect to the fact that there was a step approaching. Before I knew it, I could see the ground below me coming closer and closer to my face.

I landed on top of the man who had been trying to get into the house. I could almost hear my mum's voice scolding me in my head, "Nymphadora Tonks, how many times have I told you, to look where you are going. If I had it my way, I would cast a super-sensory charm on you, so you could never bump into things again."

Thinking about it now, it would be a pretty cool to have one cast on me. It may prevent future events like this one from happening again.

"I'm so sorry. I have inborn clumsiness, so I can't do anything about it really," I apologised to the man who was still unknown to me while pulling myself back up.

"It's fine, no harm done," the man replied, patting down his cloak so to remove any dust.

While he did this, it gave me a chance to take in his appearance while not looking too much like a stalker. He had rather worn and shabby robes, and his sandy coloured hair had the odd speck of grey in it. His face didn't have any lines in it though, so it was rather hard to estimate his age. I looked at his eyes to see if that would give me any clue about it, but the honey coloured eyes didn't appear to reveal anything and appeared to be reflecting on the world. When I said reflecting I meant deep reflecting not that the my shoelaces were undone. That was my sort of reflection.

"Eying up poor old Remus then, Nymphadora?" called out a voice I was unfamiliar with. I span round to see who it was and I could immediately tell. The black hair, strong jaw line and good looks were all common traits of the Black family, so this must be the infamous Sirius Black who was strolling into the entrance hall. Merlin, I really did wish I had that effortless elegance rather than this effortless clumsiness.

"How did you know I was Nymphadora? Could you also refrain from calling me that in the future. I shall not be punished for my mum's bad baby name choice. Tonks will do," I replied curtly. I detested the name Nymphadora; I mean, did I seem like a Nymphadora to you? So to my mum's chagrin, I just went by the name Tonks; simple and not frivolous.

"Who else would go around with ridiculous bubble-gum pink hair? Besides, last time I saw you was when you were a toddler. You had a habit of being clumsy even back then," Sirius replied and gave me a friendly smile.

"For the record, my hair's not ridiculous, it's cool. Secondly, I've never met Remus before, so I was just curious about him." I didn't want this Remus guy to think I was a stalker or something. It was just in Auror training we were taught to observe everything, so it kind of became a habit.

Remus Lupin had finally finished getting all of the dust off of his cloak and stuck out his hand. "Don't worry about it. I'm Remus Lupin, as Sirius has just said. I take it that you're Ted and Andromeda's daughter?" he asked while shaking my hand.

"Yep that's me, the one and only," I replied. "So where's this meeting thing, then?"

"In the kitchen. We probably should go through. Mad-Eye was just moaning about you being late as usual." Sirius smirked.

"Mad-Eye's always such a sticker to the schedule though. He really should go with the flow more, he would be a lot happier. I guess we should go in, being on his bad side is never particularly nice," I grimaced, remembering the numerous times I had been on it.

As we headed to the kitchen, I took the chance to learn more about my ancestral home. I could see why Mum didn't really want to talk about them. If you still couldn't believe they were nutters, wait until you saw their décor. They had house elf heads on their walls. Who on earth did that?

When I entered the kitchen I was surprised to be greeted by lots of familiar faces. To be honest, I didn't know what or who to expect given that this was a secret group. I couldn't exactly go around and ask people whether they were part of it or not.

Of course there were the people you would expect to find here, Dumbledore, Mad-Eye, Kingsley and McGonagall. They sat clustered together and spoke in hushed voices. When we walked in, Kingsley gave me a brief wink then returned to speaking to Dumbledore.

Then there were the people I was surprised to see there, Molly and Arthur Weasley, who I sort of knew due to being friends with Charlie. Bill Weasley, who of course I knew from Hogwarts; Mundungus Fletcher, who I had met from my brief forays into The Hogs Head; Hagrid, Hogwarts' Gamekeeper. That group of people proved to be a livelier bunch and had just broken into raucous laughter to Molly Weasley's annoyance. She began tapping what looked like a pair of knitting needles together.

Then probably the most unexpected of all, my old Potions teacher, Snape. I always thought he looked dodgy and had a bit of an evil streak about him, so I was surprised to find him. I think the others thought the same about him, as he was sitting in an isolated corner and looked as if he was being tortured.

"Ah Remus and Nymphadora, what a pleasure it is to see you both again. Of course you know some of these people, so I will simply introduce you to the ones you do not," Dumbledore said, while beaming us a smile. What was up with that guy? I swear he never seemed unhappy; if only I could have some of his optimism.

"This is Dedalus Diggle, Emmeline Vance, Arabella Figg, Elphias Doge and Hestia Jones." There were some odd ones there, one man was wearing a purple top hat and I swore that Figg woman was wearing carpet slippers.

I decided to take the safe choice and slipped into a free seat next to Bill. At least I knew him, so there would be no awkward small talk. Though he looked a little weird with his fang earring, but he was probably a lot saner than the top hat guy.

"As I was just saying before you arrived, this meeting is simply one informing you about what the Order actually does. Voldemort is back, and though the Ministry likes to deny that fact, we cannot do the same. The longer we ignore him, the stronger his power will become. He may become undefeatable if we stand back and let this continue," Dumbledore said gravely. "At this moment in time, we will mainly be trying to gather more information about former Death Eaters, and see if they show any signs of going back to their former leader. It's essential that we always know how strong Voldemort is and being able to find out what he's up to. Other than that, we will be trying to recruit new members."

"Constant vigilance will be an absolute key to our success. Many of you know what happened to me when I let my guard down for just a second," Mad-Eye added on. I did wonder why he never replied to any of the owls I sent him. I mean, I knew that Scotland was far away, but I thought he could have at least replied to one of them. Of course, when the truth came out I thought that was a lot cooler than being a teacher for a year.

"Yes it will be," Kinglsey agreed. "As Tonks and I are both Aurors, we have access to all the latest news and rumours circulating around, so that should be a big help too."

That seemed to have aroused that Remus bloke's attention. His eyes snapped over to me, and his mouth was hanging open. Why did this always happen when people found out I was an Auror? I get that I was clumsy, but still, there was no need to look so surprised!

"I work at the Ministry too, so I could help find out things," Arthur Weasley added in. Oh yeah, I remember Charlie mentioning he worked with Muggles. Apparently he was obsessed with them and collected any Muggle thing he could find.

"Thank you Kingsley and Arthur. Any extra information will be greatly appreciated. As there's nothing else to discuss, I suggest that we meet in two week's time for an update. You're free to leave." As soon as those words had come out of Dumbledore's mouth, Professor Slimy Snape swept out of the room. It seemed as if he felt that every second he had to be here was torture in his mind. He just needed to socialise more and then he might even make some friends. Plus, I really needed to get out of the habit of calling him that. Imagine if I actually said that to him?

"Alright then, Tonks? I haven't seen you for some time," Bill Weasley asked me.

"Of course I haven't seen you! You've been in Egypt for the past few years! Have you seen the price for Portkeys to Egypt? They're bloody expensive, so of course I couldn't afford to come and see you," I replied with a smile. "How's Charlie though; I haven't seen him in a while either?"

"He's fine. Still out in Romania, but he should be back for Christmas hopefully. I'm off to the Leaky Cauldron for some lunch; do you want to come too, so we can have a proper catch-up?"

"Yeah of course, that would be great," I replied, but I was cut off mid-sentence by Kingsley.

"Tonks, you're not going anywhere other than back to work! You're meant to hand me that report on Dmitri Vablatsky at two, and last time I checked you hadn't even started it. I need to give it to Scrimgeour by the end of the day, so you'd better get cracking," Kingsley said.

"Oops, I forgot about that! I guess it will have to be another time Bill. I've missed too many deadlines already, so I'd better not miss this one too," I apologised to him.

"No problem. From what I recall from Hogwarts, you spent most of your life in detention, rather than out of it," Bill chuckled. "This doesn't surprise me in the least."

"See you at the next meeting then," I cried over my shoulder before making my way to the door. I saw Sirius standing in the doorway, looking at if he had just smoked something dodgy. He managed to come out of his reverie when seeing me.

"Where are you off to then?" he asked.

"I've got to go and finish a report for Kingsley. I somehow managed to forget that I had to do it." I felt heat rush to my cheeks and immediately knew I was probably standing here bright red in the face.

"Don't worry; I was exactly like that when I was at school. Of course your mum was a star pupil and the teachers adored her. How is Andromeda? It would be lovely to see her again."

I tried to avoid looking at his face, as I was hoping that this wouldn't come up. I hadn't exactly broached the subject of me joining the Order to Mum and Dad yet, let alone anything about Sirius being innocent and here.

"Erm well, you see the thing is, Mum and Dad don't exactly know the full story about you yet," I said hesitantly. "They're still convinced that you're a mass murderer, so I don't think they would be too pleased about seeing you anytime soon." As soon as I uttered those words I could see Sirius' face slowly fall.

"That's fine; I can understand it would be hard to explain my situation to other people. It was nice to meet you though Tonks. Feel free to stop by anytime, as it would be great to get to know you." I could tell that he was just trying to be happy for my sake, as he had a fake smile plastered onto his face, but I could hear a hint of sadness in his voice. I should tell Mum about him, it would be nice for both of them.

"That would be great. I'd better go though; otherwise Kingsley will probably kill me. See you soon Sirius," I replied, while heading towards the front door.

Damn Kingsley, always trying to ruin my fun. This report was going to take hours. At least the Order meeting was interesting, I thought while stumbling down the stairs of twelve Grimmauld Place.


End file.
